Belgian writer-director Emmanuelle Nicot’s debut feature Love According To Dalva was awarded the Grand Prix in the International Competition at this year’s edition of the Molodist Kyiv Film Festival.
Despite the ongoing war with Russia, the Ukrainian festival was held this year at the Zhovten and Krakiv cinemas in Kyiv between 21-29 October.
Nicot’s incest drama, which premiered at the Critics’ Week in Cannes last year and is being handled internationally by mk2, received a large Scythian Deer statuette and a $5,000 cash prize from the International Competition’s jury.
The jury included Kamen Balkanski, head of Bulgaria’s Creative Europe MEDIA Desk and Ukrainian casting director Alla Samoilenko.
The jury named Zeno Graton’s The Lost Boys, which premiered in the Berlinale’s Generation 14plus section last February, as the best feature film of the International competition, and gave Special Mentions to UK director Luna Carmoon’s debut Hoard and Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s drama 20,000 Species Of Bees.
The Ukrainian-born director Lesia Kordonets received the Scythian Deer Award and a cash prize of $2,000 (UAH 75,000) for her debut feature documentary Pushing Boundaries screening in the Documentary Competition.
The production by Zurich-based Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, which premiered in the Swiss National Competition at this year’s Visions du Réel in Nyon, centres on five Ukrainian athletes forced to adapt their personal and professional lives to the ongoing armed conflict during the Winter Paralympic Games as Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Special mentions were also made by the Documentary Competition’s three-person jury of The Eclipse by Nataša Urban and Anhell69 by Theo Montoya.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian filmmaker Alla Savytska’s graduation film Tutti was recognised by the International Competition jury as the best student film and was also voted by festival-goers as the winner of this year’s Audience Award.
The 31-minute documentary follows the world famous “Shchedryk” Kyiv Children’s Choir as they face a life-altering event with the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Amidst the turmoil, the choir members find solace in music and are finally reunited to perform together on the stage of the prestigious Carnegie Hall.
This year’s edition of Molodist was held exclusively onsite in Kyiv and presented 129 films from 45 countries, of which 61 titles were short films.
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